Just To Be With You (The Sullivans #12)(77)

The very least he could do for her was not let her down now.

* * *

“Where’s Tatiana? Isn’t she still supposed to be shadowing you?”

Of course that would be the first thing Flynn wanted to know. The other man had clearly been smitten with her during last week’s meeting and he’d only gotten to speak with her for a few minutes. Lord, if he only knew how sweet it was to hear her laugh over a bad movie, or how good it felt to dance with her to the beat of the rain in the middle of the kitchen, or the way she held absolutely nothing back while making love....

“Tatiana couldn’t be here today, but she says hello, and—” He paused before deciding to tell the other man, “she also hoped we’d be agreeing to a deal today. So do I.”

Flynn took his measure. “You look really tired, and with you missing our meeting yesterday because you had other meetings out of town that couldn’t wait, I’ve got to ask: Are you sure you’ve got the time to give to my company?”

Ian laughed, then, all pretense of holding it together gone. “You want to know the honest to God truth? No, I don’t have the time. I haven’t had the time in over a decade. Longer than that. But I’m going to make the time for your company. Not only because I gave you my word that I would, but also because I haven’t been this excited about working with someone else in a very long time.”

“Honesty.” Flynn looked surprised. “I haven’t seen much of that in boardrooms these past couple of years. Until right this second, frankly, I wasn’t sure that I could trust you. Look, I’m not asking you to give up having a wife and kids for me. Hell, I hope to have those myself one day. And I get that you might not always be the best person to work with in every area, that you’ve got a staff full of intelligent, enthusiastic people who know how to kick ass in their specific arenas. I just want to know that your interest in growing my company is serious.”

“It is.”

“In that case,” Flynn said with a wide grin and an outstretched hand, “we have a deal.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

It was a good thing, Tatiana thought the following afternoon, that filming had begun today. Even better that the director had wanted to start with the scene where Rose left Aiden. They hadn’t needed much extra makeup to create the shadows under her eyes or the powder to make her skin look pale.

And when they were done with their first day on set, both the director and her co-star had told her that they’d never seen her be better. Having just channeled all of her pain and the brittleness she was feeling into her character, she was struck by the irony that just when she’d managed to keep her career from going off the rails, her personal life had completely crashed and burned.

After leaving the set, she headed out on foot through town for home. And it was true, Seattle really did feel like home already.

She was starting to know the city fairly well after the past couple of weeks, but not so well that she wasn’t surprised when her route took her right past the restaurant where she and Ian had eaten on the first day she’d shadowed him. Her chest clenched as she stood outside and remembered how naïve she’d been, how easy she’d thought falling in love—and being loved back—would be.

All the previous night without Ian, she’d longed for him, had been so tempted to go knock on his door and beg him to forget everything she’d said about not trying. But Ian, she knew, had always protected everyone else.

Now, she needed to protect him from giving up everything he loved for her.

“Tatiana!”

She was surprised to see Mia stepping out onto the sidewalk. Looking up, she saw that the restaurant where she and Ian and his professor had eaten was just a couple of doors down from Sullivan Realty, Mia’s office.

“I was just going to call you about Friday night and here you are walking past.”

Oh God, Tatiana had forgotten all about the party at Mia and Ford’s house to celebrate her and Smith’s Oscar nominations. When Tatiana had first suggested it, the family celebration had seemed like a great way to make sure Ian wouldn’t be able to avoid her. But now, after she’d made him promise on the plane to keep his distance…

She sighed. Hadn’t she known there would be family parties? In fact, it was one of the reasons he’d been so hesitant to start anything with her in the first place, because of how awkward—and horrible—it would be to constantly see each other if things didn’t work out.

Somehow, she told herself, she’d have to figure out a way to deal with seeing him at Mia’s house tomorrow night.

Mia had been all smiles when she came out of her office, but her grin quickly fell away when Tatiana lifted her sunglasses and she got close enough to see Tatiana’s face.

“You know what,” Mia said, “let’s go into my office so that we don’t cause any more pandemonium out here on the sidewalk than Ford already did this morning when he decided to go out and pick up coffees for us.” Mia put an arm around Tatiana to direct her inside. “I know falling in love with a rock star is every woman’s fantasy, but let me tell you, the reality can be a little nuts sometimes. One woman actually stripped off her underwear in the middle of the sidewalk to give to him.” Mia made a face. “Can we say yuck?”

“Serious yuck.”

“People probably do weird stuff like that to you all the time, don’t they?”